Martha Roasts a Bird
Tonight, I roasted a chicken. And it was one of the easiest and simplest dishes I’ve ever made.
I used a 3 1/2 lb. organic bird sourced from my local Whole Foods. The greenmarket vendor who I used to buy my birds from (Knoll Crest Farms) no longer sells whole birds. They only offer eggs and fresh pastas. Excellent yes. But I needed a whole bird. Oh well.
Once I had my chicken in hand, I washed and dried it, then put it in a pyrex dish where I proceeded to liberally coat it with kosher salt and fresh ground pepper. The entire back, front, bottom, top and even the cavity were dosed with the salt and I even put a few sprigs of fresh rosemary between the legs/thighs and body.
I let the bird sit in this pyrex, loosely covered with some foil, in my fridge for 2 1/2 days. It was placed in the fridge on noon on Sunday. Tuesday evening it was taken out.
I preheated my oven to 475F degrees and put the roasting pan in the oven to warm it up.
Then I patted the chicken dry. Really dry. Bone freaking dry. Outside and in.
Once the oven hit 475F, I placed the bird, breast side up, on the HOT roasting pan and gently placed some cubed yukon gold potatoes around. Skin sizzled. The crackle of fat nipped within my kitchen.
At the 20 minute mark, I upped the temperature to 500F as the skin wasn’t browning fast enough for me.
At the 30 minute mark, I flipped the bird to let the underside crispen evenly.
Another 20 minutes and I flipped the chicken back to it’s original breast side up position.
And finally, after a final 10 minutes of allowing the skin to re-crispen, I pulled the birdy out and let it cool, covered under some tin foil for about 10 minutes.
During this cooling, I removed the potatoes from the roasting pan and began scraping the grizzle around. I added some water to this and scraped some more. I poured this mixture into a little sauce pan and brought it to a quick boil. Oh goodness, even I was overwhelmed by how good this jus was.
And finally, we have a plated dish:
To call this bird soft would not do it proper justice. To call it juicy would be a crime against humanity. It was almost a chicken confit. In fact, it was better than any chicken confit I’ve ever had.
The meat fell off the bone. The white meat, which I usually shun, was soft, not chewy and perfectly salted through and through. And the chicken fat roasted potatoes? Well how do you think they were? Jeez!
A huge thanks goes out to my friend Mojo, who had I not bumped into walking home in Union Square Park a few days ago, none of this would have happened. Thanks MOJO!!!!!
